The 1995 Italian Grand Prix
There 1995 season it was a long triumphal march for Michael Schumacher with Benetton, who, having obtained the Renault engines, easily managed to score a second world championship. The German was able to close the championship match with two races to spare, in Aida in the Pacific GP, such was his superiority over his opponents.
The Monza race, scheduled for September 10, was the twelfth of the calendar and saw David Coulthard in a Williams take his second career poletrailing Michael Schumacher's Benetton by half a second, Gerhard Berger's Ferrari by eight tenths and Damon Hill, his teammate, by as much as 1″2.
Many will remember how Coulthard destroyed his race by running wide into the sand at the Curva Ascari, a mistake which forced him to start from the back of the grid. It was the most classic of elimination races, with the success of Johnny Herbert on Benetton ahead of Mika Hakkinen on McLaren and Heinz-Harald Frentzen on Sauber, who started eighth, seventh and tenth respectively.
Coulthard's backstory
We were talking about David Coulthard's sensational pole, achieved with a great advantage over his rivals. To tell a story curious anecdote the same former Scottish driver was on the podcast right on that fairytale lap in 1'24.462 Formula For Success. Coulthard was victim of a joke from Gerhard Berger, Niki Lauda and Karl-Heinz Zimmermann, F1 restaurateur: “Berger took me aside and convinced me that in Monza it was traditional to drink a grappa before qualifying. At the time I was a young and naive rider and he had organized everything and I didn't want to say no. They therefore brought three small glasses which seemed to be full of grappa, but I think there was water in the other two. Half an hour before qualifying I drank it and then I took pole!”.
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